I'm not sure I understand the purpose of the linked article. There are a few important distinctions, most notably (from the article itself):

> "We praise drawings ... because we want our kids to continue to work hard, and to do good work... But what we really want to teach our children... is that they should do good work because of the satisfactions it provides."

While I understand how this could apply to children (if not necessarily agree), we don't manage teams to have fun, we do want to encourage them to do good work.

As for the wider question, if a team is doing really good work, why not give credit where it's due? I feel like not acknowledging when people are putting in extra effort is a great way to discourage them from doing that.

I think the case with children is the same as with adults. We don't raise children "to have fun". Some would say we raise children to have a meaningful life for the parent, and I would hope for the children as well, i.e. "to do good work" as you say.

Like others have said, effect of praise would be very specific to individuals, but some have said praise hasn't helped them much. It definitely has not helped me, so here is my reasoning as to why you should not praise a good team. For me, stop the praise, tell me how to be better, and show me you care about me improving, and care about me on a personal level. Yes, I know that when I work hard and give you good output, it helps company, I don't need people to tell me that I worked hard. I can see it (If your company prevents your employees from seeing the effect of their output, thats the problem, don't say praise is necessary. The boss should not try to be the feedback loop). The reverse pavlovian effect can kick in otherwise: If it doesn't come when I am working hard, I feel bad. Also, the boss does not control reality, so becoming my feedback loops is bad, because he can warp reality based on his perspective.

It looks like this is highly specific to individuals though, the above works for me.

> Like others have said, effect of praise would be very specific to individuals, but some have said praise hasn't helped them much.

My understanding is that they were mostly referring to "fake" / superfluous praise, which I too respond quite badly to. But I think there's a big range between that kind of praise and no praise at all. Personally for me (and my guess is that for many people), if no matter how hard I work that's never acknowledged and I always get suggestions for improvement, that would create frustration and a feeling of unreasonable expectations from the company.

I would assume all this is highly specific to environment, just as much as the individual. Have you worked in an environment where nobody cares whether you do a good job, and success and quality are not recognized? You start to define your own success, which may be very different from what the business actually needs.

Obviously, working in an environment where you are not appreciated would make you feel bad. If you think praise is going to make the difference for your employee between being appreciated and not, that is insulting.

Celebration is important. But praise is cheap. Maybe some managers think its okay to just say "great job" + more praise, and then implicitly say next piece of work please, but I don't think it is.

I find it useful to acknowledge when the team is performing beyond expectations. That has been in response to early feedback I received in management roles from team members that when they were putting in extra effort they didn't feel it was "seen" and so it demotivated them to put in extra effort.

Maybe your employees have been conditioned to expect praise when they work hard, and do not currently have the opportunity to develop their intrinsic motivation to do good work.

Just because drug addicts become needy without their supply, doesn't mean they should juice up. Analogously, just because people become demotivated due to lack praise (or other reasons), does not mean praise is necessary to boost their performance. It might just be a sign there is an unaddressed problem.

Why do you imply that Alfie Kohn's ideology is the only useful one?